Midland Heart surpasses target for home building

Midland Heart completed and handed over 450 new homes for the year April 1, 2018 to March 31, 2019, more than the target set at the start of the year.

The development team at the leading Midlands housing association reached the goal on Friday, March 29, with customers collecting the keys to two properties at Rugby, Warwickshire.

Joe Reeves, Executive Director of Growth and Corporate Affairs, said:

“This is a brilliant achievement for Midland Heart and with more than 80 per cent of these new homes offered at affordable rent and low cost home ownership, it is great news for our customers.

“On April 1 this year we launched our new five-year corporate strategy and this achievement provides us with a very solid foundation to rise to our new challenge of building 3,000 new homes by March 2024.”

During 2018/19, Midland Heart started building 614 homes, whilst 450 were completed and handed over. Of these, 300 are in Leicestershire, involving seven different planning authorities for Leicester, North West Leicester, Charnwood, Blaby, Oadby and Wigston, Hinckley and Bosworth and Harborough.

A further, 59 homes were released in Birmingham, 35 in Rugby, 23 in Coventry and 19 in Dudley, West Midlands.

Chris Miller, Director of Development, said:

“I am delighted that the team not only achieved the challenge set for the year ending March 31, they surpassed it. It was a fantastic example of team working both within Midland Heart and outside of the organisation with our many partner agencies including a number of developers and 14 different local authority planning departments for these properties alone.

“I am proud of how hard the entire team worked throughout the year, but particularly over the past few months which enabled us to provide brand new homes to 100 customers just in the month of March.

“And I am especially proud that almost 60 per cent of the homes released during the year were at social or affordable rent. When we add in the 25 per cent for shared ownership, the figure increases to around 83 per cent - 371 homes – that were provided at an affordable cost to our customers.”

Of the 450 homes, more than 360 are two or three bedroom homes and 58 one bedroom apartments. Another 27 four bed houses for larger families and nine one or two bed bungalows were also completed.

“There is no respite for the development team,” added Chris.

“The bar is set higher for 2019/20 with a target of over 500 new homes to be completed during the year.”